Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods for establishing animal model of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) bone metastasis. This invention further relates to HCC liver metastasis and new drug chemical-treatment for HCC bone metastasis which are useful in the treatment and/or prevention of bone metastatic HCC.
Description of the Related Art
Liver cancer is the third most common malignant tumor in the digestive system as well as the third leading cause of cancer mortality in developing countries.
Surgical resection has been widely accepted as the only potentially curative therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most predominant type of primary liver cancer worldwide. Despite this, the prognosis and 5-year disease-free survival rate remain poor.
The presence of metastases either prevents surgery or contributes to the high rate of recurrence in those patients who have been treated surgically. Due to the improvement of overall survival of HCC patients and the development of various imaging technologies in recent decades, the incidence of bone metastasis in HCC patients significantly increased to reach as high as 28%. Bone metastasis causes severe pain, fractures, and motor dysfunction, and it is largely responsible for much of the morbidity associated with this disease.
Clinical follow-up studies of metastatic patients revealed an extremely poor survival rate (with a median survival time of only 3-7 months) because most patients did not have opportunities to undergo surgical treatment when diagnosed and received only palliative therapy.
Most studies in this area that had been described in the literature are based on retrospective analysis of clinical cases. The lack of a suitable model system had severely impeded research on the biological process and molecular basis of HCC bone metastasis. Bone metastasis frequently occurs in breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, and HCC; corresponding animal models of the former four have been successfully established to promote fundamental research on bone metastasis. The increasingly high incidence and our poor understanding of HCC bone metastasis make the establishment of a suitable model system a priority.